Monthly Archives: July 2013

Somewhere during my career as a writer (if, indeed, having a couple of blogs and a few minor published works can actually be considered a “career”), I missed the part where you learn to write posts or columns or anything under 500 words. Brevity, concision, or succinctness — whatever it is, I don’t have it…heck even at the beginning of this sentence I used three fancy words where one normal word probably would’ve sufficed. I think the two reasons for this are that 1) I really only write things that I am passionate about, and am therefore more likely to have lengthy, thought-out opinions on; and 2) I am constantly anxious about being misinterpreted in my writings —especially on the internet — so I go out of my way to add clarity even if it means being superfluously descriptive.

But I digress.

So anyway what’s the deal with the selfie? Is there anything more simultaneously loved and loathed than the selfie?

So there are really only a handful of things from my childhood that are sacred to me: Bugs Bunny, the original Nintendo Entertainment System, Claussen pickles (always refrigerated, never frozen), and Whose Line is it Anyway (there are others, but four examples is plenty for you to get the idea: I wasn’t a particularly “cool” kid). Of those, Bugs Bunny is still on the air if you know where to look, I regrettably parted ways with the Nintendo (mostly due to a lapse in judgment and the fact that my brother and I had never seen $50 at once before), Claussen’s remain one of only five things (along with milk, salad, cereal, and alcohol) I feel comfortable buying from the grocery store, and Whose Line it Anyway had a nice run and then got cancelled.

Until NOW.

I never learned about capitalization for emphasis in writing school, I just kind of figured it out on my own…did somebody say savant?? I’m like the Bobby Fischer of capslock (google the reference, 90s kids).

Imagine how excited the kid in me got when he found out that Whose Line is it Anyway was coming back? More excited than when he found out ExoSquad was on Hulu Plus (…again, google it).

As some of you are aware, I work a day job as an actor to help fund and fuel my dream to one day become a waiter. As a result, I sometimes find myself in wacky situations for acting purposes, this was definitely the case for a recent commercial shoot I was on that almost didn’t happen because apparently airlines can just straight up cancel their flights if they feel like it, no big whoop. Below is 31 hours of travel shenanigans compressed into seven minutes of me talking into a camera. Watch it if that’s your thing. If it’s not your thing, go back to eating your high cholesterol fatty foods, you stereotypical American, you.

So there you have it, a day in the life of a sort-of actor. Next time I should just take my personal jet like Clooney does.

Play on,
Dustin

Here is the first picture that popped up when I googled my own name:

if I’d taken senior portraits, I’m certain they would’ve looked like this.

…Want more Mind Bullets? New posts go up every Wednesday at noon PST (or as close to that as I feel like), and you can subscribe if you want them delivered right to your inbox. Or if you’re too impatient to wait that long you can follow me on twitter, instagram, youtube (new videos every Monday), and my boring personal website. Whew, that’s a lot of self promotion…even I don’t like me enough to keep up with all that.

This may come as a shock to you, but when I go to the grocery store, I’m going for milk. Maybe some cereal and the occasional can of soup (I know, I’m not much of a chef), but you get the idea: groceries. When I go in to an electronics store, I’m going to try out the latest gadget or gizmo that I can’t afford, or buy the game that everybody else got six months ago. The point is that I don’t go to an electronics store to buy milk, and I don’t go to a grocery store to buy HD televisions.

Which is why I get so frustrated with the way that ESPN tweets (watch as I turn that non-sequitur into just a sequitur with the power of…writing!). I am a sports fan — I might not look it, but I am — and so when I go to social media for sports updates, that’s what I want. Sports updates. News, trade rumors, the latest scores, facts, historical notes, interesting stats — that’s what I want from my sports social media. To the best of my knowledge, I’m in the majority with this sort of thinking. Now, generally, organizations are self-aware enough to realize that this is what their audience is looking for, and they happily deliver. A sort of unspoken social contract of “you give me the info I want and I’ll give you my attention”. Attention is a valuable commodity (arguably the most valuable commodity of our day), and so organizations are usually careful to abuse or waste this sort of thing. For instance when I follow Variety for entertainment news, that’s what they give me: new trailers, insider industry info, contract upheavals, castings, awards coverage, etc. They provide the facts and current info as is, without needless speculation or silly half-witticisms. Unfortunately with the ESPN twitter account, this is only true part of the time.

Some of the time, I get exactly what I want from ESPN’s social media: headlines, scores, trades. But then some of the time I get this ridiculous, half-editorialized faux commentary that reads like my little sister’s tweets (no offense, Alissa). My sister is allowed to tweet like a college-age girl because she is one. The worldwide leader in sports is not. If I wanted to follow someone’s opinions or half-baked witticisms on sports, I’d follow sports writers or anchors that I like. When I roll my eyes at a sports tweet, I want it to because The Cavs lost or The Bengals made a terrible draft pick, not because whoever runs the ESPN twitter is trying to be clever.

Disclaimer: Of course, I understand that I can unfollow at any time, and ultimately I bring all this on myself, but it’s almost July 4th and nothing is more American than complaining about something asinine that you have total control to stop/avoid at any moment. Also, please bear in mind that we are fully in the uncharted depths of the pet peeve zone, so I understand if this seems arbitrary or irrelevant to you. Just chalk it up to one of those things I needed to get off my chest.

With that in mind, I present:

Just the Facts, Ma’am: ESPN and Sports Journalism 101.

1)
Ok so let’s kick off the rant strong: I hate it whenever ESPN talks like it’s our own voice. I am my own person, I don’t need the twitter account of a sports website to try and speak for me. Specifically I don’t need it to imply that I’ve ever gotten up and intentionally watched tennis. Secondably, the NBA made tens of billions of dollars off of me and “Basketball Fans Everywhere” this year, so I think that’s thanks enough. Good rule here, just don’t put words in my mouth. There are plenty there already.